Coalca Landing expedition

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Today's adventure takes us to obscure Coalca Landing State Park, on the Willamette a bit south of Oregon City, just off Highway 99E. This is yet another Willamette Greenway parcel (a situation I explained in my Grand Island post a while back), so I'm not sure "State Park" is part of the official name, but there's a tiny State Parks sign at the driveway into the park, so I think we'll go with that.

Coalca Landing is a long, narrow strip of land on the east bank of the Willamette, with the river on one side, and Highway 99E and a major rail line on the other side. The entrance is fairly low key and easy to miss. Heading south on 99E, look for a railroad crossing just south of the Pearson's Art Gallery (a former historic tavern), with a few mailboxes out front. The aforementioned tiny State Parks sign is right there at the turn, but it's very little help as it's so small you won't really see it until you're practically past it. Anyway, once you're across the railroad tracks, the park's oddly enormous parking lot is off to your right, while directly ahead and off to the left are some residential driveways. The description to someone's Flickr photo of the park indicates the turnoff is near highway milepost 17, and a blog post I ran across has directions plus some great photos. Or if you prefer to go by GPS, I have coordinates of about 45.307810, -122.662881 for the parking lot, if that helps at all.

The park sits at a scenic stretch of the river known as the Willamette Narrows, much of which is part of the Greenway system (including three even more obscure areas on the far side of the river, "Rock Island Landing", "Pete's Mountain Landing", and "Peach Cove Landing".) Other parts of the area are owned by Metro. The obvious potential of the area led a 2009 University of Oregon design class to dream up a few proposals to enhance the site into a full-fledged state park, but as far as I know nothing's actually in the works. As the state's recent Willamette Greenway Parklands Strategy points out, the entire greenway system has been in a sort of political and financial limbo ever since the initial burst of enthusiasm faded in the late 1970s.

This is by no means the only scenic spot along the Willamette, but Coalca Landing has a couple of unusual points of interest:

• If you know where to look, you can spot the once-famous Coalca Pillar, our fair metropolitan area's very own balancing rock. If you look across highway 99E and uphill, you'll notice a rock that looks like it's sorta-balancing high above the highway. It might take a minute to see it; it's not quite as dramatic as the balancing rocks you may have seen in Road Runner cartoons. Still, this rock was once a big local tourist attraction, back in the days when 99E was the main road into Portland from points south. Back then the area been logged relatively recently and trees were smaller, so rock formations like this were easier to spot. And, for whatever reason, in those days motorists could actually be engrossed by a freakin' balancing rock. Which, let's be honest, just sits there and balances. It was an innocent and wholesome age, or so we're told.

  It was also an era when access to the pillar was apparently much easier than it is today. The library's Oregonian database lists numerous hikes and climbing trips to Coalca Pillar during the early part of the 20th century, but that seems to have tapered off prior to World War II, and I haven't come across any contemporary accounts of anyone visiting it.

  The rock's name comes from a local Indian legend. A circa-1898 melodramatic account of the story comes to us from a Southern Pacific Railroad guide to sights along their Shasta line as it travelled the West Coast:

  Coalca's Pillar.

  SOME three miles south of Oregon City, the Shasta Route passes below a rock-cliff, two hundred feet in height and standing out boldly toward the Willamette river. Its top is a level plateau, five acres in extent, which can be reached only by an almost impassable trail up the mountain side. Surmounting the edge of the cliff stands the wonderful stone pillar which our photographer has so successfully transferred to his camera. Coalca's Pillar is twenty feet high and weighs probably sixty tons. Its supporting stem or base is eight feet high and only thirty-five inches in diameter! While the passerby marvels at its equipoise and the geologist speculates over its formation, the chief interest in this strange monument centers in the Indian legend therewith connected.

  At the Great Tumwater, Willamette falls, once dwelt Chelko, a famed and thrifty chief of the Clackamas, who held a trust on all the adjacent fishing grounds. All neighboring tribes paid Chelko tribute for the privilege of his fishing preserves, although salmon are said to have been then so plentiful below the falls that Indians walked across the Willamette on their backs.

  Nearby lived the Molallas, whose stalwart young chief, Coalca, loved Nawalla, the only daughter of Chelko. But the daughter of a salmon king looked not with favor on the suit of a chief of an ordinary deer-hunting tribe, who lived on Molalla grasshoppers and jerked venison. Nor did her father favor the wooing of Coalca, and with the toe of his moccasin expressed energetic disgust whenever the latter appeared to pay court to Nawalla.

  Coalca was resolved to have the maiden at all risks, and at dark of one moon, when the old chief was spearing salmon, he, with three of his braves, swooped down on Chelko : s tepee and carried away Nawalla. That night there was dancing and great joy in the Molalla village over the great capture and equal lamentation among the Clackamas, when was discovered the abduction of their princess by a rival tribe. The Clackamas braves donned their feathers and war paint and the tocsin was sounded. For months waged a bitter war; Nawalla, an unwilling prisoner, died of broken heart ; Coalca's band slowly pressed back the Clackamas and finally determined to capture their village. Stealthily they trailed among the rocky cliffs and for the night camped on the plateau upon which our pillar now stands. Here, in restful security, they tarried before dealing the; final death blow to Chelko and his tribe. But they contended with an older and craftier warrior, who wearied not nor slept. Before the morn Chelko scaled the rocky pathway, drove the Molallas over the cliff, and permitted not one of them to escape death.

  The Indian legend further recites that the Great Spirit, sorely grieved at the untimely death of the beautiful Nawalla, wreaked vengeance upon Coalca and the three braves by turning the four Molalla warriors into pillars of stone and placing them at the edge of the cliff, exposed to the heat of summer and the storms of winter — that their stony forms might be an awful warning to passing Indians for all ages. But in time the heart of the Great Spirit softened to the three Molallas, who had but done Coalca's bidding in the abduction of Nawalla. Their spirits were released and permitted to go to the happy hunting grounds; three pillars were thrown to the bottom of the precipice and form now a part of the broken rock along the Shasta rails.

  The pillar sits on ODOT land, technically outside the state park proper. The state bought the land in June 1950 when Highway 99E was being widened. The linked Oregonian article indicates the state considered putting in a highway wayside near the pillar, but that seems to have never come to pass. The lack of parking might help explain why the pillar has been mostly forgotten in recent decades. I'd seen a vague mention that it was in the vicinity, but I only noticed it because a talkative fisherman pointed it out to me. Speaking of which, on behalf of him, and the few other fishermen who were there, I'd like to point out that there's absolutely nothing at all to catch here whatsoever, and you'd be wasting your time even trying.

• To find the second point of interest, you'll need to locate the trail heading north/downstream from the parking lot, and follow it a short distance. The trail passes several mysterious concrete structures, or remains of structures. From the info I've been able to gather so far (see, for example, this 2005 survey of the Highway 99E "green corridor"), the park seems to have once been the site of a sawmill owned by the old Doernbecher Manufacturing furniture company. Logs arrived by log raft, were pulled out of the river and milled, and the milled wood was then shipped by rail to the furniture plant near Portland's Hollywood District, around 28th & Sandy. This might also explain the park's enormous parking lot, much of which is fenced off: It might have been employee parking at one time. Documentation is still lacking here and I could be wrong about some of the details, and by all means feel free to correct anything I have wrong here if you know otherwise. Whatever the concrete structures were, they're kind of spooky now, and it probably goes without saying that they're not exactly kid friendly, even for kids who are current on their tetanus shots.

Apparently the Southern Pacific Railroad once had a station named "Coalca" somewhere in the vicinity, and there's still a rail siding by that name just north of the park. I came across a bunch of railfan stuff about it while looking for info on the park, so I figured I might as well pass a few links along for anyone who's into that sort of thing: A southbound train stopped & waiting for a northbound train to pass; a forum thread about the stop and its history; and a collection of train videos filmed here.

Oregon City's historic survey includes the Coalca area in the same historic district as the Art Deco tunnel on 99E that leads south out of town. It's kind of a stretch since Coalca is several miles south of the city proper, but hey. I mention this because one of the PDFs linked there mentions that the highway was once known as the "Road of 1000 Wonders", back in the days before people rolled their eyes at melodramatic names like that. The term also comes up on the City of Canby's history page, so I suppose it must have been in common use at one point. I'd imagine the balancing rock would have to count as one of those thousand wonders, but even if it wasn't, the name was just too fun not to share.

Finally, the "Best American Travel Writing 2012" anthology includes an excerpt from "Railroad Semantics" by Aaron Dactyl, in which the author rides the rails, hobo style, up through the Willamette Valley and on to Seattle. The train stops at Coalca due to some sort of malfunction, and our intrepid correspondent has to sneak around to dodge a nosy railroad worker. The rest of the story's fun to read too, btw.

Grand Island expedition

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Today's adventure takes us to the Willamette River's Grand Island, just north of Salem, which is home to a picturesque little state park you probably haven't heard of. It goes by either "Grand Island State Park" or "Grand Island Access", but it doesn't appear by either name on most maps or guidebooks, or even on the state's main official list of the Willamette Valley state parks. I'll get to why this is in a minute, but first a bit about the place.

The park is a small meadow on the south/upstream end of Grand Island, on a side channel of the Willamette where Lambert Slough splits off from the main stem of the river. It's mostly used as a river access point for boaters, although I should point out there's no boat ramp here, and you can certainly drive or bike to the park like I did, assuming you know it's here (note the big green arrow on the map above). There's a second State Parks sign facing the river so boaters know they're in the right spot. The park even has a fire pit and space to put up a tent, although apparently it's only legal to camp here if you arrive by boat. So if you bike to the park and decide to stay the night, you might want to pack an light inflatable raft or something to use as a decoy, and hope Officer Friendly isn't too curious about current river conditions. I'm not promising this would actually work, mind you.

Grand Island as a whole is low, flat, and agricultural, and it's connected to the mainland by a single narrow bridge. It reminds me a lot of Sauvie Island, but without all the hordes of tourists. Surprisingly (and probably thanks to strict zoning laws) there aren't any bed and breakfasts, wine bars, twee antique shops, or any of the other touristy amenities that blanket much of the rural Willamette Valley. Even the Grand Island General Store is on the mainland, where the road to the island intersects OR-221. The island itself is just farms, one obscure state park, and nothing else as far as I can tell. For now, at least. There's a current proposal to begin mining gravel on the island, near the park. As you might expect local residents are quite unhappy about this. It seemed like every house I drove past had at least one Protect Grand Island sign out front. In May of this year the Yamhill County Commission voted 2-1 to let the mine go forward, so this fight is probably headed to the courts next.

There's also an Occupy Grand Island page on Facebook, though it seems to focus on the usual Occupy concerns and not so much on the gravel thing.

As for why the park is so obscure, it turns out the place is part of the state's Willamette Greenway system, a collection of dozens of obscure parcels along the river that were purchased primarly during the 1970s at the behest of Gov. Tom McCall. (See this "Public Parcel Inventory" guide from 2004 for a partial list.) McCall proposed that the state own the entire stretch of Willamette riverbanks from end to end, which turned out to be both controversial and unaffordable. The legislature eventually pulled the plug on this idea, but not before the state had title to various bits and pieces of land along the river, including this spot, Wapato Greenway near Sauvie Island, and French Prairie just upstream of Wilsonville.

It's possible the state's downplayed the existence of these places because of the initial controversy, for fear of riling up crazy Tea Party militia types or something. A more boring possibility is that they've just fallen through the bureaucratic cracks somehow. It's ambiguous whether each greenway parcel is an official state park on its own, or a distributed part of a single very large (but still very obscure) state park, or something else entirely, and the whole greenway program probably falls under someone else's bailiwick within the state Parks Department, so including the list of greenway areas along with other state parks and having them show up on maps would probably involve years of meetings and millions of dollars just to figure out how to eventually pull it off someday.

French Prairie State Park

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This is the grand entrance to French Prairie State Park, an obscure little state park on the Willamette River, just downstream of Champoeg State Park and upstream of Wilsonville. The is one of the state's many obscure Willamette Greenway sites; they don't appear on most maps, the state parks website doesn't list them, and the only road sign indicating you're in the right place is the tiny one pictured above. I'll cover the Willamette Greenway park system further in a later post about a place I was actually able to visit. This one was "Closed for Winter" when I stopped by, even though it was after Memorial Day. The sign doesn't give any indication about when winter ends in these parts. In reality it's probably closed due to the state's budget woes, or maybe vandalism, and all they had was a "Closed for Winter" sign.

But suppose winter really has persisted into the summer months in this one small area, and there's a sheet of glacial ice here that isn't visible from the front gate, and ice floes on the river, plus drifting snow and so forth. What supernatural cause might be responsible for all this? Does a Snow Miser live here? Or maybe a white dragon from D&D has taken up residence. I lean toward the latter hypothesis, because white dragons are always chaotic evil, and that would explain why the gate is closed locked and visitors are quietly discouraged and the place's very existence is not exactly shouted from the rooftops. And the state certainly wouldn't undertake all these dragon-mitigation measures if dragons didn't actually exist, which to me is kind of a big deal even apart from the whole state park thing. It all makes perfect sense, right?

Willamette Greenway Trail

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Here are some old photos from the Willamette Greenway Trail in the Johns Landing neighborhood. As I recall, it was a nice day and I was between projects at the office and I thought I'd wander of the office for a bit. It was a pleasant walk and I ended up at the Fulton Pub near Willamette Park; any walk that ends with tater tots is pleasant by definition if you ask me. Speaking of which, I'm not sure I've actually repeated this excursion since I took these photos, and it may be overdue. Mmm, tater tots...

Cottonwood Bay expedition

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Today's thrilling adventure takes us to tiny Cottonwood Bay Park, on the Willamette River a bit south of the South Waterfront area. It's a tiny nature area along the Willamette Greenway Trail, right next to the swanky Avalon Hotel. In fact, according to a KATU story about the park, the place was spruced up and made into a formal city park in 1995 when the hotel went in.

Prior to that, as a city ecologist describes it, "...the area wasn't a park but was instead one of those forgotten tax lots that just kind of fade into the background without anyone noticing". The article isn't clear about who owned it then, but it doesn't mention anything about the city buying the land, so I suspect it was yet another chunk of land the city owned for years and had completely forgotten about. I've run across so many of those over time that it's easy to imagine that's what was going on.

I would kind of take issue with the "without anyone noticing" bit. I notice this stuff all the time; it's just that nobody notices me. But I digress.

The city's 2009 vegetation unit survey for the place (map, detail pdf) describes the park as "Unit consists of a bank above a rocky and debris laden beach of the Willamette River." It explains the park is indeed dominated by cottonwood trees, and invasive blackberry removal has been very successful.

The survey also notes, perplexingly, that "There is a luxury homeless camp on the north part of the unit on the beach." I have no idea what a "luxury homeless camp" could possibly be. These are archive photos from back in 2007 and I didn't see anything like that at the time, but it's true the economy was in better shape back then. I haven't gone back to check, but my guess is it's a regular old homeless camp, plus a lazy proofreader at City Hall. If they can lose track of a chunk of valuable riverfront land for years, they can probably write nonsensical descriptions of it too.

Wapato Greenway, Sauvie Island

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Today's adventure takes us to Sauvie Island, just north of Portland, and an obscure spot variously known as "Wapato State Park", "Wapato Access Greenway", "Wapato State Access Area" and probably other variants I haven't encountered yet. The park, whatever it's called, surrounds marshy Virginia Lake, on the Multnomah Channel side of the island. Apparently it's a great birdwatching spot, so naturally I dropped by in July. Nothing's migrating now, and the lake's close to drying up, and there are mosquitoes all over the place, but at least the weather's better. And more to the point, I had a bit of free time to check the place out right now. Even if I'd been inclined to brave the cold and rain and mud over the winter and early spring, there were meetings to attend and there was code to write and it simply wasn't possible.

If you'd like a bit more comprehensive, and seasonally-appropriate treatment of the place, you might want to check here. Plenty of photos (grey skies and all), GPS waypoints if you need 'em, the whole works.

The park also has a boat dock, which I didn't run across while I was there. Obviously you can only launch boats here that you're able to lug from the parking lot. Maybe you can also dock larger boats here coming from somewhere else. I didn't see the dock, so I'm just guessing about that part.



If (like me) you aren't a boater or an avid birdwatcher, the list of what else there is to do here seems rather slim. The park's on an official list of state parks where metal detecting is allowed, I suppose if you aren't cool or sociable enough for birdwatching. The only hitch is that you can only do it in "developed" areas, which I think means the parking lot, the boat dock, the picnic area, and maybe the viewing platform at the lake. And if you find anything of archeological, historical, or substantial monetary value, you can't keep it. So I didn't see anyone taking the state up on these generous terms while I was there. Which is fine with me. Metal detector guys and their creepy white vans and molesty little moustaches always make me nervous for some reason.



If you'd rather do something useful and non-skeezy, there's always pulling invasive weeds. The local Soil & Water Conservation District organizes volunteer parties to do this in various places, including here. I like to imagine these things are total meat markets, full of earnest, do-gooding, highly attractive single folk, evenly mixed between genders. I have no evidence for this, so you may just want to sign up and check it out for yourself, assuming you meet the aforementioned criteria (so as to not lower the tone). And pull some nasty invasive weeds while you're at it, that being the ostensible point of the whole thing. Oh, and tell them I sent you. Maybe if they get enough volunteers they'll finally forgive me for voting against their tax base measure back in October '06. (It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.)



Fireworks are strictly verboten here, although judging by the size and prominence of the no-fireworks signs, it's possible not everyone plays strictly by the rules. So there's that, I guess, but fireworks aren't going on the list we're putting together. My attitude about fireworks varies: Sometimes I want to tell people to leave it to the pros, who have vastly better fireworks anyway. Other times I want to encourage them to be as reckless as they can, maybe play a fireworks drinking game or something, and to generally just hurry up and blow their hands off already. I think it just depends on what sort of mood I'm in at the time.



There seems to be at least one other thing to do here. When I arrived, there were a surprising number of cars in the parking lot. Two more arrived just after I did -- one of them a VW bus -- and the passengers looked roughly college age. While I wandered around the park I didn't encounter a single soul anywhere, and when I got back to the car the college kids were gone... somewhere, doing... something. I have no idea where they went or what they were up to. And even if I did know, I don't think I'd rat them out anyway.

McCarthy Park expedition

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Today's thrilling adventure takes us to Portland's little-known McCarthy Park, a tiny spot on the Willamette up on Swan Island. Yes, industrial Swan Island, which isn't an island (anymore) and has no swans. The park's just a small grassy area tucked between two Freightliner office buildings, with a few benches, a historical marker, and a small ramp for launching small boats, probably nothing bigger than a canoe or a rowing shell. The big deal here is that it's about the only (legal) public access to the river between downtown & the St. Johns Bridge, so the park offers an unusual view of the river and downtown. So I thought I'd go take a few photos, and then see what (if anything) the Interwebs have to say about the place.

The signs indicate the park's owned by the Port of Portland and not by the city, which may explain why I'd never heard of it before last week. The Port's all about no-nonsense he-man stuff -- cargo ships, airports, and heavy industrial parks -- so operating a grassy riverside picnic spot isn't really their core business, and they don't make a lot of noise about it. Zero, in fact, as far as I can tell.

My guess is that the park was created as part of the Port's gigantic Swan Island Industrial Park. Perhaps when the Port decided this would be the white-collar corner of Swan Island, they figured they ought to spruce it up a little.

The Wikimapia page for one of the adjacent Freightliner buildings claims it used to be an upscale shopping center back in the 70's. Now, if anything Wikimapia is even less authoritative than Wikipedia (even I've added to it on occasion), but the "Ports O'Call" building is kind of unusual. It's kind of a rambling Craftsman-style complex, and it's not hard to imagine it divided up into swanky boutiques. Probably swanky macrame and gold medallion boutiques, it being the 70's and all. Apparently the idea of shopping on Swan Island sounded just as weird back then as it does now, since the mall eventually cratered (according to Wikimapia) and eventually Freightliner bought it.

The industrial park (and mall) replaced earlier WWII-era shipyards, which in turn displaced Portland's original airport. So what comes next, condo towers?

The city's "River Renaissance" site has a page about the park, describing it thusly:

McCarthy Park is a small, relatively unknown park on Swan Island with beautiful views of the city and the river. It is mostly used by local workers during lunch hours and after work. The park is the only place where people can access the river between the Steel Bridge and the St. Johns bridge.

It also appears on the city's North Portland Walking Map, which is where I first heard of it, and it also shows up on the state's Willamette River Recreation Guide, although neither provides any further info beyond the location.

A May 2002 Oregonian article, "When Business Shuts Down, Island Is Like Private Hideaway", sings the praises of the park, which we're told is quite nice outside of 9-to-5 business hours.

McCarthy Park also shows up in a blog post at OregonLive as a fun place to take kids, with all the rocks and driftwood along the riverbank. Gee, I dunno. I'm not sure touching rocks and driftwood along this stretch of the river is such a great idea. I mean, sure, maybe all those ooky chemicals will give your kid amazing superpowers. Or maybe not. Probably not, in fact.

It turns out the path through the park is just one segment of the larger "North Portland Greenway Trail". Right now this trail stretches for about a mile on Swan Island. The eventual goal is for the trail to follow the river from downtown all the way to St. Johns and beyond. Which is pretty ambitious, since right now much of the route is a patchwork of heavy industrial uses and Superfund sites.

A local advocacy group called npGreenway has a map of the envisioned route. They've also got a Flickr stream here.

I ran across couple of articles about the trail at the Tribune and BikePortland, and a fascinating, in-depth blog post, "Walking the Greenway Trail on Swan Island".

I honestly had no idea there was a park on Swan Island, much less a mile-long trail. I realize it's been in the paper a few times, and I might have even glanced at the news a bit. But it's also way up in North Portland, outside my neighborhood, so I suppose I just wasn't paying attention.

I think the idea behind the trail is to sort of mirror the westside's Willamette Greenway Trail, which was plotted out way back in 1987. It's still not really complete, so it may be a while yet before you can bike out to Kelly Point on the new NoPo edition.

Here's a BikePortland piece about a recent bike tour of the area further north, including the area around Bridge 5.1 I was too chicken to go investigate. I was kind of pleased to see that one commenter echoes my sentiments about adding pedestrian/bike access to the rail bridge. It wasn't me. Cross my heart.

Incidentally, it kind of amuses me how the alleged "park" properties up there have such sunny, bucolic names: "Willamette Cove" and "Harbor View". They sound like upscale gated communities or something. You certainly wouldn't hear the names and think "Superfund", but that's what they are.

I didn't follow the Greenway trail when I was there, partly because I didn't realize the extent of it, but mostly because I was worried about parking. If you look at the satellite photo above, you'll see parking lots all over the place, but they're for Freightliner employees only. I parked a few blocks away at McDonalds, but I figured I shouldn't stay away too long in case the tow truck mafia was staking the place out. As I left I went through the drive-thru and got a coffee and one of those new "Southern-style" chicken biscuits, I guess to get right with the Law or whatever. Turned out to be kind of tasty, actually. I've seen a couple of mentions of there being dedicated parking for the Greenway somewhere else, but I'm not sure quite where it is. You might be better off taking the bus -- both the 72 and the 85 finish their runs just a block or two from the park. I know that's what I'll do next time around.

The rest of my Flickr photoset is here. FWIW.